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The Marble Faun: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni
The Marble Faun: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni
The Marble Faun: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni
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The Marble Faun: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni

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From the author of The Scarlet Letter: The thrilling tale of three American artists whose search for artistic inspiration leads to romance and murder.
 
The sculpture galleries and classical architecture of nineteenth-century Rome set the stage for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s gothic romance The Marble Faun. While touring the Eternal City in search of inspiration and authentic beauty, American artists Miriam, Hilda, and Kenyon soon discover that their Italian companion, Donatello—charming and in love with Miriam—bears a striking resemblance to the marble Faun of Praxiteles. But for Miriam, their carefree pursuit is also an escape from a dark past. And when a mysterious man appears, trailing the friends’ path and tormenting Miriam, the group’s travels take a sinister turn.
 
The first novel to explore the effects of European sensibilities on American values, The Marble Faun anticipated the genre of travel novels later exemplified by The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James and The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain. Vividly evoking the great works of art and architecture in Rome, it also found favor as an unlikely guidebook for many Victorian tourists. James Russell Lowell said: “The nineteenth century has produced no more purely original writer than Mr. Hawthorne.” Here, the author of The House of the Seven Gables offers an unforgettable and suspenseful tale.
 
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LanguageEnglish
Release dateDec 13, 2016
ISBN9781504042321
The Marble Faun: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni
Author

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and biographer. His work centres on his New England home and often features moral allegories with Puritan inspiration, with themes revolving around inherent good and evil. His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic movement and, more specifically, Dark romanticism.

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Rating: 3.3425197141732284 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Not to my taste sort of meandered along.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    A decent short story extended to two hundred and fifty pages by masses of verbose descriptive padding. The depiction of the beliefs and role of the catholic church are worthy of Iain Paisley at his most extreme.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    816 The Marble Faun or The Romance of Monti Beni, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (read 18 Aug 1965) I was not moved to make any comment on this novel after I finished it. I still remember it as a fairly interesting book, though not one that excited me. You can read the Wikipedia article on the book here:The Marble Faun - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Hawthorne disappointed me in The Marble Faun. I had very high expectations after having loved The Scarlet Letter and having recently read and enjoyed both The House of the Seven Gables and The Blithedale Romance, but the Faun does not come together as a compelling narrative. Instead, it is disjointed—-maundering between beautiful, sensitive, intensely felt and described art criticism, panegyrics on the architectural ruins of Rome, complaints of Rome’s modern sordidness, and (at times morosely) depressive imaginings on sin. I am now on page 343 of 362 pages, and want to write this review as the book is fresh in my thoughts. I strive to be an ideal reader, opening myself to the author’s vision, and allowing the author space in which to craft a story without putting constraints of my own making on the text. But Hawthorne in The Marble Faun clearly reveals his sexist prejudices in ways that a woman reader cannot gloss over or ignore, and which must diminish him in my estimation. Another reviewer here on LibraryThing (LisaMarie_C) notes the extremely disappointing Chapter VI “The Virgin’s Shrine,” which is a long fantasizing over the “virginal” Hilda in which Hawthorne writes:“It strikes us that there is something far higher and nobler in all this, in her thus sacrificing herself to the devout recognition of the highest excellence in art, than there would have been in cultivating her not inconsiderable share of talent for the production of works from her own ideas. She might have set up for herself, and won no ignoble name; she might have helped to fill the already crowded and cumbered world with pictures, not destitute of merit, but falling short, if by ever so little, of the best that has been done; she might thus have gratified some tastes that were incapable of appreciating Raphael. But this could be done only by lowering the standard of art to the comprehension of the spectator. She chose the better and loftier and more unselfish part, laying her individual hopes, her fame, her prospects of enduring remembrance, at the feet of those great departed ones whom she so loved and venerated; and therefore the world was the richer for this feeble girl.” My response to this paragraph is to see it as a rationalization of the sacrifices that he sees the women of his time, and his family and acquaintance, making to support the artistic efforts of the men in their lives, including (and possibly, especially) himself—Hawthorne was extremely jealous of his current and posthumous literary reputation. There is a defensiveness in this paragraph that seems to reflect a guilty complicity in the oppression of women in this period of history. The remainder of the chapter is taken up with an obsessive idealization of Hilda as a virgin in white, surrounded with purity (and white doves) and unstained by the realities of life, the “angel in the house,” whom Hawthorne has allowed in this novel to briefly escape her captivity and experience freedom in Rome to pursue her own muse. Nevertheless, Hilda’s muse forsakes her, and leaves her as only the “best copyist” in Rome. I wait to see whether in the end of the novel Hilda will come to a deeper understanding of human nature or will return to America and the safe domesticity which Hawthorne seems to hold in store for her character. There are many potentialities which Hawthorne does not fully develop, especially in the characters of, and relationship between, Miriam and Donatello, but it can be a trap to talk about lost opportunities in a literary work, so I won’t dwell on that. Miriam is a compelling character, and an interesting contrast to the cold sculpture Kenyon. Kenyon only begins to approximate a human in the last third of the novel. Do I recommend The Marble Faun? Yes, first for the beauty of the prose describing Rome, its art and architecture—-these passages brought back many of my remembrances of my visit to Rome 20 years ago, during which I spent just as much time as Hawthorne appears to have done in the churches and cathedrals. Second, for the challenge to the reader of a difficult work which is not easily assimilated. There is something of worth here which I will perhaps not understand until I read it again. It evokes memories from my reading of Samuel Johnson’s The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, and it may be worthwhile comparing them. I think I’ll give myself a few years before I return to this novel.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I loved Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables; I thought both had brilliant characters and writing. In the case of Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter, I loved her strength and abiding compassion. And in The House of Seven Gables I loved the old maid Hepzibah and her cousin Phoebe. I got through Blithedale Romance and found the character Zenobia fascinating at first, although disappointing in the end. I even got through Fanshawe, a none-too-good first novel Hawthorne disowned. But Fanshawe was little more than a hundred pages, and the other two novels two hundred odd pages--The Marble Faun is 402 pages, and by page 150, I was feeling it was going on forever.Mind you, I rather loved Miriam--rather rare to have a strong female Jewish character in 19th Century fiction. Perhaps Hawthorne took a page from Sir Walter Scott's Rebecca in Ivanhoe? For that matter it was refreshing to see two women artists who were living--and making a living--independently. But then Hawthorne rather reversed that strong depiction of women with passages like this:Hilda’s faculty of genuine admiration is one of the rarest to be found in human nature; and let us try to recompense her in kind by admiring her generous self-surrender, and her brave, humble magnanimity in choosing to be the handmaid of those old magicians, instead of a minor enchantress within a circle of her own.The handmaid of Raphael, whom she loved with a virgin’s love! Would it have been worth Hilda’s while to relinquish this office for the sake of giving the world a picture or two which it would call original; pretty fancies of snow and moonlight; the counterpart in picture of so many feminine achievements in literature!Riiight. That's how we should describe Hawthorne's distaff contemporaries Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot--as writers of pretty fancies of snow and moonlight who'd have done better to be handmaidens to their better halves. I heard that song before with Zenobia. And many of the descriptions of Rome and of the art is lovely--but what does it say that I found such digressions more interesting than the main narrative so transparently about a modern retelling of the Fall of Adam. And if how Hawthorne depicts Jews is commendable for his time, how he portrays Catholics is just abominable--even if understandable for his time. And worst of all is the "marble faun" of the story, Donatello. If ever a metaphor was overdone...So, yeah, count me as not a fan of this.

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The Marble Faun - Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Marble Faun

Or, The Romance of Monte Beni

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Volume I

CHAPTER I

MIRIAM, HILDA, KENYON, DONATELLO

Four individuals, in whose fortunes we should be glad to interest the reader, happened to be standing in one of the saloons of the sculpture-gallery in the Capitol at Rome. It was that room (the first, after ascending the staircase) in the centre of which reclines the noble and most pathetic figure of the Dying Gladiator, just sinking into his death-swoon. Around the walls stand the Antinous, the Amazon, the Lycian Apollo, the Juno; all famous productions of antique sculpture, and still shining in the undiminished majesty and beauty of their ideal life, although the marble that embodies them is yellow with time, and perhaps corroded by the damp earth in which they lay buried for centuries. Here, likewise, is seen a symbol (as apt at this moment as it was two thousand years ago) of the Human Soul, with its choice of Innocence or Evil close at hand, in the pretty figure of a child, clasping a dove to her bosom, but assaulted by a snake.

From one of the windows of this saloon, we may see a flight of broad stone steps, descending alongside the antique and massive foundation of the Capitol, towards the battered triumphal arch of Septimius Severus, right below. Farther on, the eye skirts along the edge of the desolate Forum (where Roman washerwomen hang out their linen to the sun), passing over a shapeless confusion of modern edifices, piled rudely up with ancient brick and stone, and over the domes of Christian churches, built on the old pavements of heathen temples, and supported by the very pillars that once upheld them. At a distance beyond—yet but a little way, considering how much history is heaped into the intervening space—rises the great sweep of the Coliseum, with the blue sky brightening through its upper tier of arches. Far off, the view is shut in by the Alban Mountains, looking just the same, amid all this decay and change, as when Romulus gazed thitherward over his half finished wall.

We glance hastily at these things,—at this bright sky, and those blue distant mountains, and at the ruins, Etruscan, Roman, Christian, venerable with a threefold antiquity, and at the company of world-famous statues in the saloon,—in the hope of putting the reader into that state of feeling which is experienced oftenest at Rome. It is a vague sense of ponderous remembrances; a perception of such weight and density in a bygone life, of which this spot was the centre, that the present moment is pressed down or crowded out, and our individual affairs and interests are but half as real here as elsewhere. Viewed through this medium, our narrative—into which are woven some airy and unsubstantial threads, intermixed with others, twisted out of the commonest stuff of human existence—may seem not widely different from the texture of all our lives.

Side by side with the massiveness of the Roman Past, all matters that we handle or dream of nowadays look evanescent and visionary alike.

It might be that the four persons whom we are seeking to introduce were conscious of this dreamy character of the present, as compared with the square blocks of granite wherewith the Romans built their lives. Perhaps it even contributed to the fanciful merriment which was just now their mood. When we find ourselves fading into shadows and unrealities, it seems hardly worth while to be sad, but rather to laugh as gayly as we may, and ask little reason wherefore.

Of these four friends of ours, three were artists, or connected with art; and, at this moment, they had been simultaneously struck by a resemblance between one of the antique statues, a well-known masterpiece of Grecian sculpture, and a young Italian, the fourth member of their party.

You must needs confess, Kenyon, said a dark-eyed young woman, whom her friends called Miriam, that you never chiselled out of marble, nor wrought in clay, a more vivid likeness than this, cunning a bust-maker as you think yourself. The portraiture is perfect in character, sentiment, and feature. If it were a picture, the resemblance might be half illusive and imaginary; but here, in this Pentelic marble, it is a substantial fact, and may be tested by absolute touch and measurement. Our friend Donatello is the very Faun of Praxiteles. Is it not true, Hilda?

Not quite—almost—yes, I really think so, replied Hilda, a slender, brown-haired, New England girl, whose perceptions of form and expression were wonderfully clear and delicate. If there is any difference between the two faces, the reason may be, I suppose, that the Faun dwelt in woods and fields, and consorted with his like; whereas Donatello has known cities a little, and such people as ourselves. But the resemblance is very close, and very strange.

Not so strange, whispered Miriam mischievously; for no Faun in Arcadia was ever a greater simpleton than Donatello. He has hardly a man’s share of wit, small as that may be. It is a pity there are no longer any of this congenial race of rustic creatures for our friend to consort with!

Hush, naughty one! returned Hilda. You are very ungrateful, for you well know he has wit enough to worship you, at all events.

Then the greater fool he! said Miriam so bitterly that Hilda’s quiet eyes were somewhat startled.

Donatello, my dear friend, said Kenyon, in Italian, pray gratify us all by taking the exact attitude of this statue.

The young man laughed, and threw himself into the position in which the statue has been standing for two or three thousand years. In truth, allowing for the difference of costume, and if a lion’s skin could have been substituted for his modern talma, and a rustic pipe for his stick, Donatello might have figured perfectly as the marble Faun, miraculously softened into flesh and blood.

Yes; the resemblance is wonderful, observed Kenyon, after examining the marble and the man with the accuracy of a sculptor’s eye. There is one point, however, or, rather, two points, in respect to which our friend Donatello’s abundant curls will not permit us to say whether the likeness is carried into minute detail.

And the sculptor directed the attention of the party to the ears of the beautiful statue which they were contemplating.

But we must do more than merely refer to this exquisite work of art; it must be described, however inadequate may be the effort to express its magic peculiarity in words.

The Faun is the marble image of a young man, leaning his right arm on the trunk or stump of a tree; one hand hangs carelessly by his side; in the other he holds the fragment of a pipe, or some such sylvan instrument of music. His only garment—a lion’s skin, with the claws upon his shoulder—falls halfway down his back, leaving the limbs and entire front of the figure nude. The form, thus displayed, is marvellously graceful, but has a fuller and more rounded outline, more flesh, and less of heroic muscle, than the old sculptors were wont to assign to their types of masculine beauty. The character of the face corresponds with the figure; it is most agreeable in outline and feature, but rounded and somewhat voluptuously developed, especially about the throat and chin; the nose is almost straight, but very slightly curves inward, thereby acquiring an indescribable charm of geniality and humor. The mouth, with its full yet delicate lips, seems so nearly to smile outright, that it calls forth a responsive smile. The whole statue—unlike anything else that ever was wrought in that severe material of marble—conveys the idea of an amiable and sensual creature, easy, mirthful, apt for jollity, yet not incapable of being touched by pathos. It is impossible to gaze long at this stone image without conceiving a kindly sentiment towards it, as if its substance were warm to the touch, and imbued with actual life. It comes very close to some of our pleasantest sympathies.

Perhaps it is the very lack of moral severity, of any high and heroic ingredient in the character of the Faun, that makes it so delightful an object to the human eye and to the frailty of the human heart. The being here represented is endowed with no principle of virtue, and would be incapable of comprehending such; but he would be true and honest by dint of his simplicity. We should expect from him no sacrifice or effort for an abstract cause; there is not an atom of martyr’s stuff in all that softened marble; but he has a capacity for strong and warm attachment, and might act devotedly through its impulse, and even die for it at need. It is possible, too, that the Faun might be educated through the medium of his emotions, so that the coarser animal portion of his nature might eventually be thrown into the background, though never utterly expelled.

The animal nature, indeed, is a most essential part of the Faun’s composition; for the characteristics of the brute creation meet and combine with those of humanity in this strange yet true and natural conception of antique poetry and art. Praxiteles has subtly diffused throughout his work that mute mystery, which so hopelessly perplexes us whenever we attempt to gain an intellectual or sympathetic knowledge of the lower orders of creation. The riddle is indicated, however, only by two definite signs: these are the two ears of the Faun, which are leaf shaped, terminating in little peaks, like those of some species of animals. Though not so seen in the marble, they are probably to be considered as clothed in fine, downy fur. In the coarser representations of this class of mythological creatures, there is another token of brute kindred,—a certain caudal appendage; which, if the Faun of Praxiteles must be supposed to possess it at all, is hidden by the lion’s skin that forms his garment. The pointed and furry ears, therefore, are the sole indications of his wild, forest nature.

Only a sculptor of the finest imagination, the most delicate taste, the sweetest feeling, and the rarest artistic skill—in a word, a sculptor and a poet too—could have first dreamed of a Faun in this guise, and then have succeeded in imprisoning the sportive and frisky thing in marble. Neither man nor animal, and yet no monster, but a being in whom both races meet on friendly ground. The idea grows coarse as we handle it, and hardens in our grasp. But, if the spectator broods long over the statue, he will be conscious of its spell; all the pleasantness of sylvan life, all the genial and happy characteristics of creatures that dwell in woods and fields, will seem to be mingled and kneaded into one substance, along with the kindred qualities in the human soul. Trees, grass, flowers, woodland streamlets, cattle, deer, and unsophisticated man. The essence of all these was compressed long ago, and still exists, within that discolored marble surface of the Faun of Praxiteles.

And, after all, the idea may have been no dream, but rather a poet’s reminiscence of a period when man’s affinity with nature was more strict, and his fellowship with every living thing more intimate and dear.

CHAPTER II

THE FAUN

Donatello, playfully cried Miriam, do not leave us in this perplexity! Shake aside those brown curls, my friend, and let us see whether this marvellous resemblance extends to the very tips of the ears. If so, we shall like you all the better!

No, no, dearest signorina, answered Donatello, laughing, but with a certain earnestness. I entreat you to take the tips of my ears for granted. As he spoke, the young Italian made a skip and jump, light enough for a veritable faun; so as to place himself quite beyond the reach of the fair hand that was outstretched, as if to settle the matter by actual examination. I shall be like a wolf of the Apennines, he continued, taking his stand on the other side of the Dying Gladiator, if you touch my ears ever so softly. None of my race could endure it. It has always been a tender point with my forefathers and me.

He spoke in Italian, with the Tuscan rusticity of accent, and an unshaped sort of utterance, betokening that he must heretofore have been chiefly conversant with rural people.

Well, well, said Miriam, your tender point—your two tender points, if you have them—shall be safe, so far as I am concerned. But how strange this likeness is, after all! and how delightful, if it really includes the pointed ears! O, it is impossible, of course, she continued, in English, with a real and commonplace young man like Donatello; but you see how this peculiarity defines the position of the Faun; and, while putting him where he cannot exactly assert his brotherhood, still disposes us kindly towards the kindred creature. He is not supernatural, but just on the verge of nature, and yet within it. What is the nameless charm of this idea, Hilda? You can feel it more delicately than I.

It perplexes me, said Hilda thoughtfully, and shrinking a little; neither do I quite like to think about it.

But, surely, said Kenyon, you agree with Miriam and me that there is something very touching and impressive in this statue of the Faun. In some long-past age, he must really have existed. Nature needed, and still needs, this beautiful creature; standing betwixt man and animal, sympathizing with each, comprehending the speech of either race, and interpreting the whole existence of one to the other. What a pity that he has forever vanished from the hard and dusty paths of life,—unless, added the sculptor, in a sportive whisper, Donatello be actually he!

You cannot conceive how this fantasy takes hold of me, responded Miriam, between jest and earnest. Imagine, now, a real being, similar to this mythic Faun; how happy, how genial, how satisfactory would be his life, enjoying the warm, sensuous, earthy side of nature; revelling in the merriment of woods and streams; living as our four-footed kindred do,—as mankind did in its innocent childhood; before sin, sorrow or morality itself had ever been thought of! Ah! Kenyon, if Hilda and you and I—if I, at least—had pointed ears! For I suppose the Faun had no conscience, no remorse, no burden on the heart, no troublesome recollections of any sort; no dark future either.

What a tragic tone was that last, Miriam! said the sculptor; and, looking into her face, he was startled to behold it pale and tear-stained. How suddenly this mood has come over you!

Let it go as it came, said Miriam, like a thunder-shower in this Roman sky. All is sunshine again, you see!

Donatello’s refractoriness as regarded his ears had evidently cost him something, and he now came close to Miriam’s side, gazing at her with an appealing air, as if to solicit forgiveness. His mute, helpless gesture of entreaty had something pathetic in it, and yet might well enough excite a laugh, so like it was to what you may see in the aspect of a hound when he thinks himself in fault or disgrace. It was difficult to make out the character of this young man. So full of animal life as he was, so joyous in his deportment, so handsome, so physically well-developed, he made no impression of incompleteness, of maimed or stinted nature. And yet, in social intercourse, these familiar friends of his habitually and instinctively allowed for him, as for a child or some other lawless thing, exacting no strict obedience to conventional rules, and hardly noticing his eccentricities enough to pardon them. There was an indefinable characteristic about Donatello that set him outside of rules.

He caught Miriam’s hand, kissed it, and gazed into her eyes without saying a word. She smiled, and bestowed on him a little careless caress, singularly like what one would give to a pet dog when he puts himself in the way to receive it. Not that it was so decided a caress either, but only the merest touch, somewhere between a pat and a tap of the finger; it might be a mark of fondness, or perhaps a playful pretence of punishment. At all events, it appeared to afford Donatello exquisite pleasure; insomuch that he danced quite round the wooden railing that fences in the Dying Gladiator.

It is the very step of the Dancing Faun, said Miriam, apart, to Hilda. What a child, or what a simpleton, he is! I continually find myself treating Donatello as if he were the merest unfledged chicken; and yet he can claim no such privileges in the right of his tender age, for he is at least—how old should you think him, Hilda?

Twenty years, perhaps, replied Hilda, glancing at Donatello; but, indeed, I cannot tell; hardly so old, on second thoughts, or possibly older. He has nothing to do with time, but has a look of eternal youth in his face.

All underwitted people have that look, said Miriam scornfully.

Donatello has certainly the gift of eternal youth, as Hilda suggests, observed Kenyon, laughing; for, judging by the date of this statue, which, I am more and more convinced, Praxiteles carved on purpose for him, he must be at least twenty-five centuries old, and he still looks as young as ever.

What age have you, Donatello? asked Miriam.

Signorina, I do not know, he answered; no great age, however; for I have only lived since I met you.

Now, what old man of society could have turned a silly compliment more smartly than that! exclaimed Miriam. Nature and art are just at one sometimes. But what a happy ignorance is this of our friend Donatello! Not to know his own age! It is equivalent to being immortal on earth. If I could only forget mine!

It is too soon to wish that, observed the sculptor; you are scarcely older than Donatello looks.

I shall be content, then, rejoined Miriam, if I could only forget one day of all my life. Then she seemed to repent of this allusion, and hastily added, A woman’s days are so tedious that it is a boon to leave even one of them out of the account.

The foregoing conversation had been carried on in a mood in which all imaginative people, whether artists or poets, love to indulge. In this frame of mind, they sometimes find their profoundest truths side by side with the idlest jest, and utter one or the other, apparently without distinguishing which is the most valuable, or assigning any considerable value

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